As ISIS experiences increased pressure to its claimed territory in Iraq and Syria from all sides, the extremists continue to pile on atrocity after atrocity, the latest being the burning alive of 19 Yazidi girls for the offense of refusing to be the sex slaves of their captors. Reports out of Mosul, Iraq, which has been held by ISIS militants since June, 2014, indicate that ISIS extremists carried out the horrendous act in a public demonstration.

Fox News reported June 6 that members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) made a public show of its response to defiance, namely the refusal of a group of 19 Yazidi Kurdish girls to have sex or become sex slaves of the extremists, by setting the entire group on fire in a cage set up in a public square in Mosul. According to human rights activists and witnesses to the horrific spectacle, the girls were burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds.

According to ARA News, the 19 Kurdish girls, all followers of the Yazidi religion (Yazidi is an ancient Mesopotamian religion independent of other religious belief systems prevalent in the Middle East; its adherents are nearly all ethnic Kurds), were part of an estimated 3,000 Yazidi girls taken captive since the fall of Mosul and ISIS taking over the region in 2014. But, according to local media activist Abdullah al-Malla, these particular girls refused to become their captors’ sex slaves, part of the spoils of warfare allowed by the extremist Wahhabist Islamic doctrine followed by members of ISIS.

“They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants.”

The public execution follows the equally horrendous execution of a group of 25 suspected spies and collaborators in Mosul in May, an incident also reported by the Inquisitr. Like the Yazidi girls, the large group of men, who were all citizens of Mosul, were placed in a cage. Instead of burning them alive in public, however, the 25 men were lowered alive into a pool of nitric acid in a local militant headquarters facility, their bodies remaining immersed until they dissolved.

The burning alive of the Yazidi girls also again highlights the sex slave trafficking effecting by ISIS as an organization and by its individual members. At the end of May, a report of ISIS sex slaves for sale online made international headlines. Appearing on Facebook, the two women were offered for sale — and discussed at length in the comments section — by an individual believed to be a German national fighting for ISIS. The price for each woman: $8,000.

Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization and human rights monitoring and advocacy institution, have called on ISIS to release all Yazidi women and girls that have been abducted since 2014. Skye Wheeler, a researcher of women’s rights emergencies, told ARA News, “The longer they are held by ISIS, the more horrific life becomes for Yezidi women, bought and sold, brutally raped, their children torn from them.”

Human Rights Watch notes that “Many of the abuses, including torture, sexual slavery, and arbitrary detention, would be war crimes if committed in the context of the armed conflict, or crimes against humanity if they were part of ISIS policy during a systematic or widespread attack on the civilian population. The abuses against Yezidi women and girls documented by Human Rights Watch, including the practice of abducting women and girls and forcibly converting them to Islam and/or forcibly marrying them to ISIS members, may be part of a genocide against Yezidis.”

At present, it is believed that ISIS extremists in both Syria and Iraq hold captive roughly 1,800 Yazidi women and girls, according to officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The abducted and captive females are among an estimated 3,500 people ISIS continues to hold in captivity, according to the United Nations, which cited allegations reported to the organization by Yazidi officials as of October 2015.

As ISIS territory shrinks under the continued military attacks of the U.S.-led coalition of forces, the Russian-backed Syrian contingent, and various other militias intent on ousting the extremist religious regime, its acts to control the civilian population and even its own personnel have become increasingly barbarous. And they haven’t stopped with just executing civilians and religious captives held as spoils of war. As reported by the Inquisitr in May, the besieged and beleaguered extremists are turning on themselves, going so far as to execute as many as 45 of its own militants for failing to hold their battle positions while losing ground to opposing forces. But of ISIS delivering a standard form of execution for desertion or cowardice (firing squad, hanging), the extremist group instead buried the men alive.